Internet Radio Advertising For Your Business

In the last decade or so, web-based “radio stations” have proliferated far and wide. Pandora Radio, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Apple iTunes Radio, Google Play, SoundCloud, Slacker … not to mention the hundreds – if not thousands – of stations you can find that are based all over the planet when you search sites like TuneIn or Streema. An amazing array of options!

It makes you wonder if anyone even listens to AM/FM (traditional over-the-air) radio anymore. Well, 93% of people do still listen to AM/FM, but now over half of the U.S. population says they also tune into Internet Radio of some kind.

The good news for advertisers is that even though most of these services have a subscription pay option so listeners can avoid commercials, about 90% of listeners choose the FREE version and are OK with hearing occasional ads. More good news is that in many cases, those who have signed up to be able to log in and listen to these “radio stations” have given a little bit of information about themselves … like their age, gender, and location … so the ads can be more targeted to the kind of person you as an advertiser want to reach.

Let’s say you own a yoga studio and you know that most of your customers are women between the ages of 28-52 who come from within 15 miles of your location. You can tell Pandora or Spotify to ONLY play your ad when someone who fits that description has logged in!

Also, you don’t pay per commercial like you do with traditional radio. You pay a price per thousand “impressions” that are made on the kind of people you are looking for. So let’s say over a month’s time, 20,000 women aged 28-52 who live 15 miles or less from your yoga studio tune into Pandora (and it doesn’t matter what they’re listening to … you just want to reach those particular people). Each of them tunes in an average of 4 times during that month. That’s 80,000 impressions (20,000 x 4). You pay about $15 per thousand. (This is also known as CPM, or Cost Per Thousand … “M” being the Roman numeral for a thousand.) So you pay $1,200 for that ad campaign … $15 times 80 (thousand).

Typically, about 1% of those 20,000 listeners are going to respond to your ad, either by calling your number or clicking on the banner that appears while your ad is playing on the Pandora page on their phone. That’s 200 responses. They cost you $1,200. If $6 per response works for you, then your campaign was a success!

That is just an example to explain how the targeting can work on Internet Radio outlets. Your mileage may vary … by a lot! So give us a call or drop us a note and let’s talk over your specific situation, and with no obligation whatsoever we are happy to provide the info that will help you decide whether radio advertising might make sense for you. Whether you are interested in Pandora Radio advertising, iHeart Radio advertising or any other Internet radio, we can help you out.